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The difficult economic situation in Europe has increased the focus on bank deleveraging. In Ireland, this is just the latest phase in a process which has seen Irish banks dispose of significant non-core assets located outside Ireland throughout 2011 and 2012. In 2013, the focus will shift to Irish assets and, in particular, loan portfolios connected with Irish real estate. Frequently, these portfolios involve multiple privately-owned companies and investment structures with individuals participating as borrowers and guarantors. The Irish tax system and the real estate focus of the loans means that Irish loan acquisition vehicles offer some distinct advantages over non-Irish vehicles.

Hear the Bank of England's Andrew Haldane speak and you could be forgiven for assuming the banking sector circa 1980 was something of a financial utopia. His most recent interview with BBC Radio 4's The World at One is a case in point.

Shadow banking won’t be as elusive

Chisom Udechukwu In the face of rapid globalisation, the fundamental objective of corporate restructuring is to reposition an organisation against the high tide of business failure and maximise shareholder value. Some obvious reasons for corporate restructuring include the need for greater competitiveness, increased profitability, diversification and/or compliance with regulatory or statutory provisions. Corporate restructuring is typically divided into two main categories differentiated in terms of expansion or divestment technique. Srivastava and Mushtaq argue in the Asian Journal of Technology & Management Research (Vol. 01 – Issue 01, Jan–Jun 2011) that expansion techniques include mergers, takeovers, franchising, intellectual property rights acquisitions and holding company arrangements, whereas divestment techniques encompass sell offs, de-mergers, slump sales, management buy-outs, arrangements on sale and compromise. They argue for a third class of restructuring which includes share repurchasing, management buy in, reverse merger and equity carve-out.

Governments could have a tougher time agreeing restructuring plans with creditors following a landmark US court ruling on Argentina's sovereign debt default of 2001.

What does the Canadian government’s initial rejection of the Petronas/Progress deal signal for SOE investment, and Cnooc’s bid for Nexen?

Brazil has a unique opportunity to develop the mechanisms for early stage, smaller and also more established medium-sized companies to access the funds they need to grow their business through the equity capital markets.

Patrick Wieland Forests sequester and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide and play a fundamental role in global climate regulation. Yet deforestation and forest degradation of tropical areas is accelerating dramatically. Forest loss is responsible for between 3.6 and 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, representing 17-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2007). The carbon sequestration and storage functions of the world's forests are a type of ecosystem service. Ecosystem services are generally taken for granted: we benefit from the clean air and carbon offsetting services that forests provide, but do not equally share the costs for their preservation. To correct this situation, mechanisms to value ecosystem services through economic incentives have arisen as an international strategy. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one such incentive scheme.

For those investors following Spanish distressed opportunities, there is much more to the market than the traditional distressed corporate debt and NPL portfolios held by financial institutions.

A first-of-its-kind private placement has linked US institutional investors with Brazil's project market – and revealed them to be a perfect a match.